


and all the walls fall down

by perennials



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, idealistic i.e. with a Happy EndTM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 10:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8486581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: “Would you like to hear a story?” Viktor asks. Yuuri’s hand drops to the tabletop, and he sifts his own over it.“Once upon a time, there was a little boy in a little town by the sea that loved to dance on the ice, and an older boy with a secret, that loved nothing but to dance on ice.”





	

i.

 

Beautiful things are meant to be admired from a distance.

 

This is something Yuuri has understood since he was tall enough to reach the remote control on the living room table without falling over his own toes.

 

Beautiful things, like the gorgeous figure poised like a fairytale on the television screen, are hands off. Remote. Glass walls and smoke detectors and he, the child with his face pressed up to the glass, eyes moon-bright and glowing.

 

Because they are daydreams, are soap bubbles, are easy to fall into and impossible to pull yourself out of. Sirensong like silk across your skin and whispering in your ears. Enticing, enchanting.

 

When he gets a bit older Yuuri thinks that he wants to become something— something exquisite enough to gasp and fawn over, and he tries to be. He tries, and he tries, and he tries.

 

The Grand Prix final that year is a stinging slap to the face. The sadness, the embarrassment, the disappointment dribbles down his cheeks like melted candle wax, melts his makeup, smears his reflection in the mirror into something ugly.

 

And yet, Yuuri is still all too familiar with beautiful things. He can recite the spins and jumps in precise order for every single routine Viktor Nikiforov has done since his junior debut, has long since memorized the way the spotlight spins moonlight into his every gesture when he's on the ice. Glamor clings to him like a second skin, spun tight and shimmering. He wears it with confidence. With pride.

 

After all, why wouldn't he? Viktor is the five time world champion, certified current best in the professional skating world. He's prime material, the creme de la creme, cast in camera flashes and winner’s gold. He is beautiful.

 

Yuuri can never bring himself to look away. He never tries to.

 

But he never attempts to close the distance between them either. Distance is good, is safe, is keeping interviews painstakingly torn from magazines in a binder on his bookshelf and walking away when Viktor Nikiforov ( _five time world champion_ , a tinny voice in his head recites, as if he doesn't already know, as if he doesn't already know) asks if he wants a commemorative photo.

 

Distance will keep his beautiful things beautiful. For the first twenty-three years of his life, that's all that Yuuri needs.

  
  


ii.

 

When Viktor shows up at his family’s hot springs resort Yuuri can't help thinking an angel has turned up at their front doorstep. He blinks once, twice. Swallows. Takes in smooth skin, toned muscle, moonlit hair, gaze sliding from night sky to gravel floor, shy and stuttering.

 

It's like a daydream come true, only daydreams aren't meant to step foot in reality. Something so sacred shouldn't have to share space with a nobody like _him_. Yuuri thinks he needs to get his glasses checked.

 

(It turns out the problem isn't with his glasses, Yuuri later discovers, but with Viktor’s impulse-control.)

 

Yuuri’s pulse rate automatically soars, tripling and quadrupling whenever Viktor is within a ten-foot radius. Given their living arrangements, this proximity is guaranteed. The first few attempts by Viktor to breach his personal space all end the same way: in retreat.

 

Which is to say, talking to Yuuri those first few weeks with Viktor around is like hanging out with a bullet train going at full speed.

 

He gets used to it eventually— the fleeting touches, the butterfly-scatter of skin on skin contact, those eyelashes and that smile and those ridiculously defined abs. He gets used to it, mostly.

 

 _Gets used to it_ meaning he stops bolting through the nearest opening like a bird whose ass has been set on fire. _Gets used to it_ not meaning his heart doesn't still drill a hole through his ribcage and turn his lungs to dust every once in a while.

  
  


iii.

 

If watching Viktor grow up under the glare and glory of international media coverage had been hard, then watching the same man stifle a yawn as he lies half-sprawled on the floor is even harder. Between hiding from the press that have made a nest in Hasetsu and a daily regimen of grueling physical training both Yuuri and Viktor have finally hit something of a breaking point, it seems.

 

The yawn, Yuuri notes from across the table, is a formidable one. The sort that stretches your entire face from side to side, dancing across your cheeks and eliciting a purr of contentment when it leaves. In spite of it all Viktor looks unfairly adorable, and the heavy-lidded look he levels at Yuuri after he's closed his mouth makes his chest hurt.

 

Yuuri bites his lower lip and brings a hand up to readjust his glasses. Viktor’s hand meets his halfway, fingers curving along the slope of his wrist.

 

He grins like a firework, loud and fizzy and sharp, but the gesture is sleep-soft and gentler than usual. The yukata he wears is, as always, a little loose. It pools around his shoulders, barely grazing his skin in the places where it actually touches.

 

Vaguely Yuuri wishes Viktor would allow his silvery laughter to unravel as much as he enjoys letting his clothes fall away. He's beautiful even underneath all of that sunshine soda-pop brilliance— Yuuri’s sure of it.

 

The sensation of smooth skin sliding up the inside of his wrist jerks Yuuri back into real time motion, and he remembers with a calm that surprises himself that Viktor had grabbed his arm a moment ago.

 

“Would you like to hear a story?” Yuuri’s hand drops to the tabletop, and Viktor sifts his own over it.

 

“Shouldn't we be sleeping? We have a long day ahead tomorrow as well, Viktor.”

 

“Sleep can wait!”

 

“...maybe just a bit.”

 

“Great! So, here goes.”

 

Viktor takes a deep breath.

 

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy in a little town by the sea that loved to dance on the ice, and an older boy with a secret, that loved nothing but to dance on ice.”

  
  


iv.

 

Viktor Nikiforov is Viktor now. Just Viktor.

 

He’s like the sun. Too warm, too bright. Yuuri’s drunk on his laughter, his skin, his light, sunscreen be damned.

  


 

v.

 

“You are always looking at me, aren't you?” Viktor watches Yuuri curiously from across the ice.

 

“An unfounded statement with absolutely no proof,” Yuuri accuses, cheeks flushing the palest shade of pink. He skates up to the edge of the rink and rests his elbows on the ledge.

 

“Oh, but I do have proof! Because I am always looking at you, too.”

 

Yuuri’s traitorous heart skips three and a half beats, but all he does in reply is raise an eyebrow. He sighs, dropping his head so his gaze is boring a hole into the ice beneath him instead of the stars in Viktor’s eyes.

 

“Aren't you embarrassed saying things like that?” And then, more quietly, to himself, “what kind of lie.” The words find their way out of his mouth with a wry laugh. Absentmindedly, he traces the lines criss-crossing the otherwise smooth surface with the tip of one blade.

 

After a moment to stew in silence, Yuuri looks back up only to find Viktor pressed up within a hair’s breadth of him. They're close enough that even with the barrier separating them he can feel the heat radiating faintly from Viktor’s face, can see where the peach-sweet blush on his nose starts and ends. It makes him dizzy.

 

“Why, there _is_ no lie.”

 

Viktor’s expression is less warm now, but no less intense. The smile has evaporated, and in its place something profound, vaguely resembling dissatisfaction has condensed, worked its way into the set of his jaw, the curl of his lip, the tilt of his eyebrows. If Yuuri didn’t know any better, he’d say Viktor looked upset.

 

“No lie at all, _luchik_.”

 

And Yuuri doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he taps the tip of Viktor’s nose lightly, and laughs again. “Okay, okay,” he says, skating back towards the center of the rink (away from Viktor), “no lie.”

  
  


vi.

 

Yuuri dreams, sometimes.

 

About Viktor, fifteen and flying and molten lightning on the ice, hair a shimmer of snow-white flashing behind him.

 

About Yuri, fifteen and sun-red with the visceral anger of youth, gold medal looped securely around his neck.

 

About himself, in a brightly-lit toilet cubicle, disappointment pitched low and heavy in his stomach.

 

 _What kind of lie._ He feels sick. _What kind of lie._

  
  


vii.

 

“You do not realize, perhaps because you are always looking at someone else—” Viktor murmurs, hands folded in the blankets between them.

 

“Hmm?” Yuuri pulls out his earphones and hits _pause._

 

Viktor smiles him back into the pillows. “You are beautiful, Yuuri.”

 

And then he takes Yuuri’s hand like he’s taking Yuuri’s heart, whisking him away on some breathtaking adventure into the unknown.

 

Viktor kisses the pad of Yuuri’s index finger gently.

 

 _But you're the beautiful one_ , Yuuri thinks, breath caught somewhere between his heart and his ribcage. “Oh,” he says.

 

Viktor watches him from under a curtain of silver lashes. Worries his lower lip between his teeth. Breathes. Moves. Up close he's so pretty he seems almost removed from the human realm, like a separate, astral entity. Yuuri can see stars in his eyes.

 

What a gorgeous daydream he is. Without thinking Yuuri shrugs his hand free and brings it up to the side of Viktor’s face. Eyelids fluttering shut, Viktor turns into the touch with an ease born from months of companionship and familiarity.

 

“Yuuri.” Viktor breathes his name like a psalm.

 

And Yuuri realizes— he let this daydream into his life, let this fairytale slide under his skin and turn everything blush-pink and bright and beautiful.

 

Viktor chose to stay.

 

He likes this dream, Yuuri decides. Selfishly— he wants this beautiful thing, beautiful man, for himself.

 

Shifting his hand lower to cup the bow-curve of Viktor’s jaw, he leans forward, closing the distance between them with his lips.

  
  


viii.

  
In this dream they're both laughing so hard, their lilting voices can be heard for miles and miles around them.

**Author's Note:**

> according to the moscow times, luchik means sunbeam. i'm probably not the first one to check out their article anyway  
> usual disclaimer for yuri on ice, the anime's still airing, i'm still bullshitting my way through characterizations, if this shit diverges from canon in any way after the series ends i give up and walk away and live with the guilt forever.  
> also now that you think about it their relationship here is kind of ambiguous so let's just assume everything up until yuuri fuckin kisses him is just Viktor Being His Good Ol Friendly Self
> 
> as usual thanks for reading!  
> if ya liked the thing pls consider leaving a comment i'm withering and weak and. walrus-y  
> have a good one


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